​‘We did what we had to do’: Putin opens up on Crimea reunification plan

The decision to give Crimea an opportunity to choose if it wants to be a part of Russia again was made after an unofficial survey showed the majority of Crimeans would back reunification, Vladimir Putin revealed in an interview to a Russian TV channel.

The interview is part of a documentary, “Crimea. The Road
Back Home,” scheduled to be aired by the Rossiya One TV
channel. In the film, the Russian president has given new
insights into the events leading up to last year's referendum in
Crimea.

The vote took place after days of violence on the streets of
Kiev, which came to be known as the Maidan revolution. The
government was overthrown in February 2014, and the Ukrainian
president fled the capital.

The highly volatile situation prompted President Putin to convene
an urgent meeting with his national security and defense chiefs,
during which a crucial decision was taken.

“It was the night of the 22nd,” Putin told Rossiya One’s
Andrey Kondrashov. “We were done by 7 am. And I won't conceal
it, when we were saying goodbye, I told my colleagues – there
were four of them – that the situation in Ukraine has evolved in
such a way that we have to start work on returning Crimea to
being a part of Russia. We couldn't abandon the territory and
people who live there, couldn't just throw them under this
nationalist bulldozer.”

The Russian president went on to explain that the referendum, on
joining Russia, would not have gone ahead without broad public
support on the peninsula.

So, he ordered an unofficial poll to be conducted there.

“We found out that 75 percent of respondents there wanted
[Crimea] to join Russia,” Putin said.

Only then was the referendum was given the green light. There
were two choices offered to the voters: to say yes either to the
reunification of Crimea with Russia or to Crimea having more
autonomy as a part of Ukraine.

“The ultimate goal was not to seize Crimea or annex it,”
Putin said. “The ultimate goal was to let people express
their opinion on how they wanted to live further.”

The president emphasized that he was ready to support any
decision taken by the people of Crimea.

“We know the results of the referendum. And we did what we
had to do,” the Russian leader said.

The US and the EU have never recognized the Crimea referendum and
reacted to it by sanctions against Russia and against the
peninsula.

Russian officials have dismissed criticism of the Crimean
referendum, citing Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of
independence as an example of self-determination praised by the
West.

The issue has recently been touched upon again by Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov.

“When it comes to international law and the attention it gets
in particular in connection with the issue of Crimea, we would
want our Western colleagues to have no less enthusiasm in dealing
with other events in recent history,” Lavrov said.

“These include OSCE members bombing another OSCE member, I
mean Yugoslavia, the situation with the unilateral declaration of
independence by Kosovo – without any referendums. No one then
even bothered to ask why it happened without a referendum. And
also the invasion of Iraq under a fake pretext, and the rude
violation of the UN Security Council mandate concerning Libya. A
country has been destroyed and now everyone is trying to glue its
pieces back together and is asking oneself of how not to allow
disintegration of other countries in the region.”